Featured Research

from universities, journals, and other organizations

'Brain training' may boost working memory, but not intelligence

Date:

October 8, 2013

Source:

Association for Psychological Science

Summary:

Brain training games, apps, and websites are popular and it's not hard to see why -- who wouldn't want to give their mental abilities a boost? New research suggests that brain training programs might strengthen your ability to hold information in mind, but they won't bring any benefits to the kind of intelligence that helps you reason and solve problems.

Share This

New research suggests that brain training programs might strengthen your ability to hold information in mind, but they won't bring any benefits to the kind of intelligence that helps you reason and solve problems.

Brain training games, apps, and websites are popular and it's not hard to see why -- who wouldn't want to give their mental abilities a boost? New research suggests that brain training programs might strengthen your ability to hold information in mind, but they won't bring any benefits to the kind of intelligence that helps you reason and solve problems.

Related Articles

The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

"It is hard to spend any time on the web and not see an ad for a website that promises to train your brain, fix your attention, and increase your IQ," says psychological scientist and lead researcher Randall Engle of Georgia Institute of Technology. "These claims are particularly attractive to parents of children who are struggling in school."

According to Engle, the claims are based on evidence that shows a strong correlation between working memory capacity (WMC) and general fluid intelligence. Working memory capacity refers to our ability to keep information either in mind or quickly retrievable, particularly in the presence of distraction. General fluid intelligence is the ability to infer relationships, do complex reasoning, and solve novel problems.

The correlation between WMC and fluid intelligence has led some to surmise that increasing WMC should lead to an increase in both fluid intelligence, but "this assumes that the two constructs are the same thing, or that WMC is the basis for fluid intelligence," Engle notes.

To better understand the relationship between these two aspects of cognition, Engle and colleagues had 55 undergraduate students complete 20 days of training on certain cognitive tasks. The students were paid extra for improving their performance each day to ensure that they were engaged in the training. Students in the two experimental conditions trained on either complex span tasks, which have been consistently shown to be good measures of WMC, or simple span tasks. With the simple span tasks, the students were asked to recall items in the order they were presented; for complex span tasks, the students had to remember items while performing another task in between item presentations. A control group trained on a visual search task that, like the other tasks, became progressively harder each day.

The researchers administered a battery of tests before and after training to gauge improvement and transfer of learning, including a variety of WMC measures and three measures of fluid intelligence.

The results were clear: Only students who trained on complex span tasks showed transfer to other WMC tasks. None of the groups showed any training benefit on measures of fluid intelligence.

"For over 100 years, psychologists have argued that general memory ability cannot be improved, that there is little or no generalization of 'trained' tasks to 'untrained' tasks," says Tyler Harrison, graduate student and lead author of the paper. "So we were surprised to see evidence that new and untrained measures of working memory capacity may be improved with training on complex span tasks."

The results suggest that the students improved in their ability to update and maintain information on multiple tasks as they switched between them, which could have important implications for real-world multitasking:

"This work affects nearly everyone living in the complex modern world," says Harrison, "but it particularly affects individuals that find themselves trying to do multiple tasks or rapidly switching between complex tasks, such as driving and talking on a cell phone, alternating between conversations with two different people, or cooking dinner and dealing with a crying child."

Despite the potential boost for multitasking, the benefits of training didn't transfer to fluid intelligence. Engle points out that just because WMC and fluid intelligence are highly correlated doesn't mean that they are the same:

"Height and weight in human beings are also strongly correlated but few reasonable people would assume that height and weight are the same variable," explains Engle. "If they were, gaining weight would make you taller and losing weight would make you shorter -- those of us who gain and lose weight periodically can attest to the fact that that is not true."

The researchers plan to continue this research to better understand how training specific aspects of cognition can lead to positive transfer to other tasks, both in the lab and in the real world.

Association for Psychological Science. "'Brain training' may boost working memory, but not intelligence." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 8 October 2013. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131008091720.htm>.

Association for Psychological Science. (2013, October 8). 'Brain training' may boost working memory, but not intelligence. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 3, 2015 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131008091720.htm

Association for Psychological Science. "'Brain training' may boost working memory, but not intelligence." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131008091720.htm (accessed March 3, 2015).

More From ScienceDaily

More Mind & Brain News

Featured Research

Mar. 3, 2015 — Why do people shake hands? A new study suggests one of the reasons for this ancient custom may be to check out each other's odors. Even if we are not consciously aware of this, handshaking may ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — It appears that stress markers in unemployed people can be found, independent of smoking, alcohol consumption and overweight/obesity. Results from a study suggest that long-term unemployment may be ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Doctors write millions of prescriptions a year for drugs to calm the behavior of people with Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia. But non-drug approaches actually work better, and carry ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Briefly counseling college students on the dangers of binge drinking is effective in lowering heavy drinking levels among many students, but only temporarily. Three out of four will be right back ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Loneliness brought about by the death of a spouse can trigger a wider network of depression-like symptoms, a study has found, but authors suggest that doctors are often too quick to attribute these ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Family Based Interpersonal Psychotherapy (FB-IPT) is more effective in treating preadolescent children with depression compared to child-centered therapy (CCT), a recent study has found. ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Everyone worries about losing their memory as they grow older—memory loss remains one of the most common complaints of the elderly. But the molecular reasons behind the processes remain unclear, ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — A strong link has been made between subthreshold manic episodes and likelihood of developing bipolar disorder in children of parents with bipolar disorder. The study’s findings could improve ... full story

Mar. 2, 2015 — A newly published study is the first to report an association between bisphenol-A (BPA), a common plasticizer used in a variety of consumer food and beverage containers, with autism spectrum disorder ... full story

Mar. 2, 2015 — On Feb. 26, a picture of a cocktail dress originally uploaded to the blog Tumblr swept the Internet and managed to divide the population over a simple question: What color is the dress? Some viewers ... full story

Related Stories

Dec. 17, 2014 — Computerized brain games that are advertised as a way to help boost intelligence and prevent dementia will be popular Christmas gifts this year. But there’s little scientific evidence to support ... full story

Nov. 25, 2013 — A two-year study found that computer-based training programs that claim to help children with ADHD succeed in the classroom and in peer relationships while reducing hyperactivity and inattentiveness ... full story

Dec. 19, 2012 — After conducting the largest online intelligence study on record, scientists concluded that the notion of measuring one's intelligence quotient or IQ by a singular, standardized test is highly ... full story

May 31, 2012 — Working memory training is unlikely to be an effective treatment for children suffering from disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity or dyslexia, according to a research analysis. In ... full story

July 14, 2010 — A commercial brain fitness program has been shown to improve memory in older adults, at least in the period soon after training. The findings are the first to show that practicing simple visual tasks ... full story

ScienceDaily features breaking news and videos about the latest discoveries in health, technology, the environment, and more -- from major news services and leading universities, scientific journals, and research organizations.